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COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures and distancing requirements that have disrupted both work and family life for many. Concerns exist that these disruptions caused by the pandemic may not have influenced men and women researchers equally. Many medical journals have published paper...

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Autores principales: Andersen, Jens Peter, Nielsen, Mathias Wullum, Simone, Nicole L, Lewiss, Resa E, Jagsi, Reshma
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7304994/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32538780
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58807
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author Andersen, Jens Peter
Nielsen, Mathias Wullum
Simone, Nicole L
Lewiss, Resa E
Jagsi, Reshma
author_facet Andersen, Jens Peter
Nielsen, Mathias Wullum
Simone, Nicole L
Lewiss, Resa E
Jagsi, Reshma
author_sort Andersen, Jens Peter
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures and distancing requirements that have disrupted both work and family life for many. Concerns exist that these disruptions caused by the pandemic may not have influenced men and women researchers equally. Many medical journals have published papers on the pandemic, which were generated by researchers facing the challenges of these disruptions. Here we report the results of an analysis that compared the gender distribution of authors on 1893 medical papers related to the pandemic with that on papers published in the same journals in 2019, for papers with first authors and last authors from the United States. Using mixed-effects regression models, we estimated that the proportion of COVID-19 papers with a woman first author was 19% lower than that for papers published in the same journals in 2019, while our comparisons for last authors and overall proportion of women authors per paper were inconclusive. A closer examination suggested that women’s representation as first authors of COVID-19 research was particularly low for papers published in March and April 2020. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the research productivity of women, especially early-career women, has been affected more than the research productivity of men.
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spelling pubmed-73049942020-06-23 COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected Andersen, Jens Peter Nielsen, Mathias Wullum Simone, Nicole L Lewiss, Resa E Jagsi, Reshma eLife Human Biology and Medicine The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures and distancing requirements that have disrupted both work and family life for many. Concerns exist that these disruptions caused by the pandemic may not have influenced men and women researchers equally. Many medical journals have published papers on the pandemic, which were generated by researchers facing the challenges of these disruptions. Here we report the results of an analysis that compared the gender distribution of authors on 1893 medical papers related to the pandemic with that on papers published in the same journals in 2019, for papers with first authors and last authors from the United States. Using mixed-effects regression models, we estimated that the proportion of COVID-19 papers with a woman first author was 19% lower than that for papers published in the same journals in 2019, while our comparisons for last authors and overall proportion of women authors per paper were inconclusive. A closer examination suggested that women’s representation as first authors of COVID-19 research was particularly low for papers published in March and April 2020. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the research productivity of women, especially early-career women, has been affected more than the research productivity of men. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7304994/ /pubmed/32538780 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58807 Text en © 2020, Andersen et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Human Biology and Medicine
Andersen, Jens Peter
Nielsen, Mathias Wullum
Simone, Nicole L
Lewiss, Resa E
Jagsi, Reshma
COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title_full COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title_fullStr COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title_short COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
title_sort covid-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected
topic Human Biology and Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7304994/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32538780
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58807
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